Contents

Complicity in Soviet espionage and subversion

Browder, as CPUSA General Secretary, long benefited from the denial of the liberal and leftist intelligentsia that the CPUSA did not participate in Soviet espionage against the United States. These assertions continue, despite the presentation of substantial contrary evidence over the years by Elizabeth Bentley and others [1][2] the Venona cables, the Judith Coplon, Alger Hiss, and William Remington trials, as well as dozens of articles and books. In the Venona cables he is known as Agent "HELMSMAN".

During this period Browder successfully recruited dozens of operatives from amongst his associates for Soviet intelligence. An indication of Browder's cooperation with the KGB can be derived from a discussion Jacob Golos had with Browder in November 1943 regarding a group of KGB informants he was running. Browder became involved in the operation, and after Golos's death that same month, Browder arranged with Bentley to take over the Perlo group. She met the members in John Abt's apartment in New York. [3] Venona decrypt #588 April 29 1944 from the KGB New York office states “for more than a year Zarubin (station chief) and I tried to get in touch with Victor Perlo and Charles Flato. For some reason Browder did not come to the meeting and just decided to put Bentley in touch with the whole group. All occupy responsible positions in Washington, D.C.” [4]

As early as May 1943, Browder cabled to Moscow U.S. armament production statistics on tanks, anti-tank guns, machine guns, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyer and merchant vessels. [5]

Election of 1944

During the Presidential election of 1944, on May 23 at a rally in New York's Madison Square hailing the "Democratic Coalition," Browder announced the birth of the "Communist Political Association," which he described as "a non-party organization of the American working class dedicated to the traditions of Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Jackson and Lincoln, under the changed conditions of modern industrial society." [6]

In May of 1944 Raissa Browder, Browder's wife who had entered the United States illegally, was permitted to become a citizen. According to the sworn testimony of ex-Communist Howard Rushmore, State Department and Immigration Service officials insisted upon this at the urgent requests of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. [7]

Venona

Browderism and Marxist deviationism

In April 1945 Jacques Duclos of the French Communist Party published a repudiation of Browderism. Browder was expelled from the American Politburo in February 1946. Browder at the time held a 5-year contract to represent Soviet publishing houses in the United States which kept him on the payroll for a time.[8]

In a speech delivered on January 17, 1949, which was reprinted as a pamphlet entitled Chinese Lessons for American Marxists, Browder points to this distinctiveness of Chinese Communist Party theory, its “exceptionalism” as the reason for its success. He quotes from several of Anna Louise Strong’s articles in support of his thesis that Mao Tse-tung’s policy has been to develop a particular line for Chinese Communism, to "China-ise Marxism and Leninism." (Page 9.) Browder quotes extensively from The Thought of Mao-Tse-tung by Anna Louise Strong. Browder was purged for just such an exceptionalist approach in the United States.[9]

↑US Senate, 81st Congress, 1st Session, Committee on the Judicary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, September 14, 1949, Part II, (GPO), p. 785.

↑Scope of Soviet activity in the United States. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, second session-Eighty-fifth Congress, first session. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off. 1956.

↑Jack Brad, How Mao Conquered China, Edited by Hal Draper. Compilation originally published in Labor Action between September 1948 and October 1949. Reprinted in Workers Liberty Volume 3 No. 24, October 2009, p. 8 (pdf). Retrieved from WorkersLiberty.org February 23, 2010.